What is the truth and why has it become so troublesome in our lifetime?
Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” … the incorruptible truth epitomized by the Creator of all truths. If we were to ask the wind, what is wind? Then the wind would say, I “am” the wind. I represent the breadth, depth, and complete essence of what wind was, is, and will ever be. This is what Jesus is saying.
With this powerful knowledge under our belts, we, as Christians, try to align with him, hoping to spot a lie from afar, expose its treachery, diffuse its impact, and employ our big boots of discernment to stomp it back to hell.
However, as we grow older and more concise in our ability to process words and deeds, we come to realize that truth is far more complicated than what we had originally thought. Truth embodies time and space and has invisible tentacles that reach out to connect to other truths, other people, places, and events. Truth can be buried and resurrected, and then buried again by the people who resurrected it. Truth has plasticity, meaning, it can stretch and constrict based on the intent of the messenger. Truth has multiple categories … A convenient truth, a strategic truth, a useless truth, a modified truth, and so on. I will try to cover some of these in my four-part podcast series. But full coverage would take many lifetimes to render a comprehensive end.
Let’s start with something simple. When I was growing up, the official history books stated that Columbus discovered America. The teachers taught this truth. The Encyclopaedia Britannica reinforced this truth. Historians all over the world agreed with this truth.
But as the science got better,(more ancient records and maps were discovered, oceanographers retraced early ocean currents, archaeologists dug up new artifacts, and so on), it became quite clear that Columbus did NOT discover America. Some of the Viking expeditions such as the ones led by Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, reached America in the 10th century, hundreds of years before Columbus came alone. In fact, several historical records have shown that a sixth-century Irish monk named Saint Brendan sailed to North America before Erikson.
For the sake of simplicity, we shall call the Columbus discovery a timely truth, meaning there was no proof of deceitful intent. This was the truth as we knew it at that time. Science needed time to uncover the new truth as we know it today. Futurists believe that time travel will become a reality around 2030. If so, we may find that this new truth that we have embraced for the last two decades may not hold up. But that’s a whole different discussion.
A timely truth with no deceit intended is completely different from a strategic truth. A strategic truth is usually a form of propaganda released to accomplish a strategic goal. Hitler once said, if you tell a lie long enough and loud enough eventually people will believe it to be the truth. Global warming does not exist!!!!!. Stop fixating on these big storms and melting ice caps!!!!! It’s an Al Gore trick to get government money and win a Nobel Prize!!!!! ……. Is that loud enough?
In a 1923 book “A Study of American Intelligence”, Carl Brigham wrote that he considered blacks to be naturally inferior, because of “their small skulls”. He vehemently insisted his purpose for presenting these facts was solely for scientific and educational enlightenment.
The book sold well and many people came to his defense. And this is where the rubber meets the road. This is the essence of my four-part series, to understand why people accept or reject certain kinds of truths. Certain kinds of people believe that all health supplements are a worthless waste of money, that we die in a thats-that moment and simply rot in the box with the maggots and worms, that OJay is innocent, that Trump is the victim of a witch-hunt, and that Jesus was a rebel and blasphemer trying to overthrow the Roman government. Maybe, he never existed at all.
Both, the truth and a lie need feet upon which to trod, agents to sustain their worthy or unworthy proliferation. We shall look at these agents in podcast two.
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